A flow control scheme for wireless ATM with hybrid ARQ and weighted ERICA algorithm combined

To provide seamless wired/wireless ATM networks integration, a flow control framework for ABR traffic traversing both wired and wireless networks should be developed. The major challenges of designing flow control protocols for a combined wired/wireless network are the varying transmission characteristics (bandwidth, error and reliability) of the wireless media. In this paper, we propose a novel flow control scheme for air interface: a weighted ERICA algorithm which considers both the quality of the wireless channel and the status of buffer at base station. Type-I hybrid ARQ is chosen as the error recovery scheme to combat fading effects, while weighted ERICA algorithm is designed to achieve a fair and efficient resource allocation in wireless channels for ABR services. In particular, the weight of a connection used in the algorithm dynamically adapts in terms of varying channel conditions. Simulation is conducted in typical indoor wireless ATM networks. It is shown that the proposed scheme in this paper can achieve a high throughput with minimized buffer size at the base station when compared with the conventional flow control scheme.